The competition — now in its 13th year — features new and updated categories that reflect the dynamics of securities operations.
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Financial Technologies Forum (FTF) has launched the nomination process for the 2024 FTF News Technology Innovation Awards competition, which recognizes the operational excellence of professionals, financial technology vendors, service providers, and industry bodies that had significant achievements in the 2023 calendar year.
The winners of the FTF Awards competition are chosen by their peers in the securities operations industry via a vetted voting process.
The nominations officially opened on January 15 and will close on March 15, 2024. After the nominations are unveiled, the voting begins on April 3 and closes on May 3. The winners will be announced June 3. An annual gala celebrating the winners and their guests will be held in New York City.
The competition — now in its 13th year — features new and updated categories that reflect the dynamics of the securities industry.
T+1 Awards Categories
For instance, there are two new awards categories focusing on the push for trading day plus one (T+1) settlement
The Best Service for T+1 Transition category focuses on the involvement of a service provider or a particular service offering from a third-party solutions provider. This award will spotlight the exceptional service offering that helped securities firms cross the line to T+1 settlement.
In addition, the Best Solution for T+1 Transition will focus on North American firms that have been using a variety of third-party offerings as they transition their securities operations to T+1 settlement cycles. This award will bring the focus to the third-party solution that securities firms have found to be the best offering to help them on the road to T+1. The winning solution will have helped firms manage the key challenges inherent in the shift to T+1 and the after-effects of such a move.
New & Updated Categories
The other new or updated categories are:
- Best Disruptive Solution: This award highlights the distributed ledger, A.I.-based, big data, open-sourced, and application programming interface (API) efforts that are solving old problems in a new more complete way and becoming part of the post-trade IT landscape;
- Best New Product Breakthrough: This award spotlights the solution from a provider that has gotten traction for an exceptional new offering that challenges established players. New offerings for consideration can come from established providers or newcomers to the industry;
- Best Data Protection Solution: For achievement in this category, the winner must demonstrate excellence in cybersecurity protecting, alerting, and protecting firms against money laundering, fraud, remote network hacks, malware, ransomware, data hacks, and security challenges via mobile devices, digital assets, and crypto-based financial products;
- Best New Product: This category is open to the provider that has achieved a breakthrough, major overhaul, or completed significant advances for a key offering that provides an unprecedented advantage to clients. The advanced offering can come from established providers or newcomers to the industry;
- Best Alternative Data Provider: The winner in this category will be a provider of alternative data feeds and data from unconventional sources. The provider has to demonstrate excellence in meeting the non-mainstream, unstructured data needs of financial services firms including hedge funds, pension funds, and mutual funds;
- Best Generative A.I. Solution: Generative artificial intelligence (gen A.I.) has made a big splash in the securities industry and many firms and providers are exploring how to apply this game-changing technology to data, analytics, accounting, databases, cloud services, modeling, and operations;
- Best Cutting-Edge Sell Side Solution: The award for achievement in this category spotlights an innovation that has helped eliminate manual processes, bottlenecks, broken workflows, legacy systems, and inefficiencies;
- Best Cutting-Edge Buy Side Solution: This category is for the solution that disrupts middle- and back-office post-trade operations for the buy side. The award will honor innovations that replace partially-automated systems, legacy platforms, and inefficiencies, and create new solutions;
- Best Digital Custody Solution: Increasingly, investors want digital assets to be part of their portfolios and investment strategies. This award will recognize the provider that can offer leading-edge custodian support amid dynamic market conditions and an ever-evolving regulatory environment; and
- Best Digital Transition for Ops: Business conditions and IT innovations have been moving the industry closer to total automation. This award would honor the provider, consultancy, organization, or financial services firm that has helped participants achieve a full digital transition for operations.
The full list of the 2024 FTF Awards categories can be found here: https://bit.ly/48tbEdZ
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